The Gist

Recently, in my part of the world, we celebrated Valentine’s Day and Family Day on the same long weekend. It is easy to get caught up and overwhelmed with all the commercialization that surrounds Valentine’s Day. The flowers, chocolates, gifts and its primary focus on romantic love. But Family Day offered an opportunity to look more broadly and examine the various types of love, warmth and connection that we all want and need in our lives.

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Photo credit: Freestock

It is easy to become preoccupied with all the things we need to do, whether because of obligation or choice. Our responsibilities can start to feel like burdens. And so often our modern day pursuit of personal productivity blinds us to other more valuable things - like making mistakes, learning from them, and having fun along the way. Children have an incredible ability to do all three.  Perhaps it is because they take themselves less seriously and bring a novice’s perspective.  This way of looking at life is sometimes referred to as “beginner's mind.”  The kind of mind that remains open to learning, seeking out varied information, and finding new possibilities.  See full transcript here.

Photo Credit: Xavi Cabera

It might feel like the first week of this year has already flown by!  But the rest of the year still stretches ahead of us. What will the year bring? Can we hope, plan, and work towards new goals?  Can we take any lessons from the previous year has taught us and move forward?

We can choose to start each new year fresh, with curiosity about its possibilities. But uncertainty can also fill us up with a sense of dread. Sometimes our sense of impatience about the future can come from our unhealthy relationship with time or what is called ‘time poverty’ - a fear that time is always in short supply. Will we get everything done in the limited time we have each day or each year? But this fear creates a heightened sense of urgency which often leads to hasty decisions or actions as a way to relieve our restlessness. Often we mistakenly believe that doing something is better than doing nothing.

But there are no quick fixes for most meaningful things in life, which usually just take time, effort and patience.

See full transcript here.Photo credit: Jovica Smileski

As we go through our lives we might wonder whether we are spending our days as we should be. How much time should go into one thing versus another? How much effort is enough? While there are no easy answers to such broad questions, it helps to start by understanding our priorities and our intentions. Armed with this understanding, we can use a practice what is called “wise effort” – knowing when a lot of effort is warranted and when a lighter touch is more appropriate.

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Photo credit: Barbara Horn

To everything there is a season, the saying goes.  And here in many parts of North America, we are in the midst of my favourite one - autumn.  To me, it is a season that brings together the best of the other three.  There is a hint of lingering summer heat tempered by cooler breezes.  Some days feel like spring with fresh rains and some green still left in the leaves.  And as the trees start turning into shades of red and auburn, they remind us that autumn is keeping the winter snow at bay a little longer.

Fall also signals a time of change.  For garden lovers, it's a time to close off our flower beds, wrap our evergreens in burlap blankets, and plant bulbs for the spring season.  As an amateur gardener with mostly a brown thumb, I always admire the bountiful gardens of my friends and neighbours.  and professionally landscaped botanicals with sprawling year round blooms and weed free beds.

But in a world so focused on outward curated perfection - perfect houses and lawns, perfect bodies and clothes, indeed perfect lives whatever that means to each of us - I have come to terms with my messy garden.  In fact it has become a source of solace and joy, a place where I get to putter, to experiment, to try things with imperfect knowledge, and to learn by trial and error.  A forgiving place where flowers and vegetables sometimes bloom in spite of my ignorance.  A reminder that life is inherently messy and surprising despite our best attempts to control it.

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Photo credit: Merlin's Hollow

This week marks the official start of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. My thoughts always turn to the school year as children are settling into new grades and routines in most North American cities.

When the pandemic was first declared, no one could have imagined that the vast majority of the world's children would not be in school, atleast not in person.  Technology, helped millions of children through online learning, with all its benefits and pitfalls. 

Now, five years on, everyone from scientists and pediatricians, to educators and policy makers, will no doubt keep reflecting on the impact of the pandemic on education.  It makes one wonder about education as a whole, what it means to learn and how that has changed over human history.

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Last time, in Part 1 of this topic, we looked at how the remote versus in-person work debate is unfolding in different countries. Global trends aside, each of us must grapple with these questions individually. This debate rages on as we all try to navigate the ever changing waters of the workplace. Everywhere, people are wondering if remote work is here to stay or if it will be a relic of the pandemic?

For some of us its a moot point because certain front line jobs simply don't lend themselves to working from home. For the rest of us who do have the privilege of choice, it comes down to preference, perception and what we want to get out of work.

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Photo credit: Alexa Williams

After Covid bans started lifting a couple of years ago and some of us were going back to work in person, we shared a two-part update on global trends and individual choices we were making in returning to the office. Today, the debate continues as employees and employers grapple with the right balance, so this topic remains timely. We are revisiting it, since for many of us September is a month of transition. Children are returning to school and adults are resuming a regular work schedule. But a few years into a post-pandemic world, what does showing up for work really mean?

See full transcript here.Photo Credit: Nick Morrison

It is very easy to get wrapped up in everything we need to do day to day. When we feel busy or overwhelmed it is natural to vent to people who lend an empathetic ear. Whether that is having too much on our plates. Or a difficult person or situation we might be dealing with.

Whatever the problem, most of us find it comforting to have a calm presence to turn to - a caring spouse, a trusted colleague or a patient friend who is happy to let us get things off our chest or maybe offer a different perspective. I think of such people as an oasis, not just in times of crisis, but in the day to day business of living life, with its inherent ups and downs.

It doesn't hurt to reflect on how we can be that nurturing presence to others. If we want to build a more compassionate world with greater mutual understanding, there is no better place to start than with ourselves. Certainly we can all show kindness through outward acts. This could mean volunteering our time in local communities. Or donating to charities that have global reach. It may be through work that helps others or helps the planet as a whole. 

But surprisingly what is often harder than these outward acts, is sustaining an inner equilibrium while we deal with smaller, everyday things in life. So how can we train ourselves to maintain presence? How can we be an oasis for others? Here are a few ideas. See full transcript here.

Photo credit: Benjamín Gremler

Although the Covid pandemic has thankfully passed, we continue to learn a lot about its toll on virtually every country around the world.  The pandemic came with a shared sense of helplessness and fear.  It shone a light on mental health as anxiety levels spiked. But even before Covid, anxiety was on the rise, and many people will continue to struggle with it in the future.

Of course, anxiety is a spectrum, with those on the mild end experiencing it in passing, and those on the severe end being debilitated by it. Until recently, doctors and therapists relied on tools such as medications and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help patients manage anxiety. This was the case for Dr. Jud Brewer, a psychiatrist and neuroscience researcher at Yale and Brown universities, who uses these tools in his own practice. But he has also successfully incorporated mindfulness into his work. See full transcript here. See full transcript here.

Photo credit: Ben Mathis Seibel